The Bilingualism of the Language of the Victim and the Language of the Victimizer

Inspired by a panel which took place at the 2018 IARPP conference in New York – this paper, which deals with the bilingualism of the language of the victim and the language of the perpetrator, offers a close reading of the panel’s three papers, trying to characterize their unique poetics of testimony through a differentiation between four modes of traumatic testimony which are distinguished from one another by the degree of the psychic motility they succeed to form in relation to traumatic memories: the “metaphoric”, the “metonymic”, the “excessive” and the “Muselmann” testimonial modes. The last part of the paper suggests a link between the testimonial language of the victim and the testimonial language of the victimizer, trying to understand these polarized languages as two variations of the refusal to mourn.     

Cancer Victim Identity for Individuals with Histories of Cancer and Childhood Sexual Abuse

Identifying as a ‘cancer victim’ has been linked to adverse psychosocial sequelae in individuals who have been diagnosed with cancer. Being a childhood sexual abuse (CSA) survivor may predispose individuals towards a “victim” identity in general. The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of identifying as a ‘cancer victim’ among CSA survivors who were diagnosed with cancer as adults, and to explore psychological factors associated with identification as a cancer victim. 105 adults reporting both a history of CSA and of having been diagnosed with cancer as an adult were recruited through Amazon Mechanical Turk. Variables assessed included CSA severity, abuse-related powerlessness, general mastery, and cancer victim identity. Fifty-one percent of the sample endorsed a cancer victim identity. Path analysis revealed that abuse-related powerlessness was related to decreased feelings of general mastery, which was in turn associated with cancer victim identification (x ² = .12, DF = 1, p < .73; RMSEA = .00; SRMR = .01: Bentler CFI = 1.0). From a clinical perspective, the results suggest that increasing general mastery in CSA survivors in the cancer setting may be an important mechanism for attenuating the risk for developing a cancer victim identity and, presumably, for downstream adverse psychosocial sequelae.     

Irigaray and the Sacrifice of the Sacrifice of Woman

One of the problems with a superficial reading of “Belief Itself” and “Women, the Sacred, Money” is that Irigaray is too easily understood as merely saying that woman is the hidden victim of sacrifice and that one is called to reveal this hidden victim. While this is an important aspect of Irigaray's work, a more radical interpretation is opened up when it is read alongside the work of Lacan and ?i?ek. Irigaray's work disturbs the traditional discourses on revelation, sacrifice, and woman on one level while at the same time reinforcing their most extreme ramifications.     

Occupational Therapy and Victim Advocacy

ABSTRACT

This article provides an orientation to increase the profession's awareness of occupational therapy's role in victim advocacy, an emerging area of community-based practice. Analysis and comparison of OT's core assumptions and values with general principles of victim advocacy and empowerment demonstrate striking similarities: Each acknowledges holism and a profound connection between the individual and society, as well as their ability to interact and influence each other. In addition, the cultures of OT and victim advocacy both value the dignity and worth of persons, self-determination, freedom and autonomy, latent capacity, human uniqueness and subjectivity, and active and mutual cooperation in restoration or recovery. The compatibility of OT and victim advocacy is further demonstrated in the context of one therapist's work with survivors of domestic and sexual violence.     

Fraud and the American Dream: Toward an Understanding of Fraud Victimization

ABSTRACT

American culture and the practices of government focus an overwhelming majority of attention on violent “street” crime. As a result, very little is known about the victims of fraud. In order to contribute to this literature, a case study is provided that examines the victim population of a Ponzi scheme. Data are provided on the general characteristics of the victims, their investments, and the growth of the scheme. A theoretical model is formulated from Messner and Rosenfeld.'s work in Crime and the American Dream. This paper expands the concepts of this theory by providing evidence that it can be used to explain victim behavior.     

General Versus Specific Victim Blaming

Abstract

The authors investigated (a) whether victim blaming is a general variable in a person's make-up or (b) whether the extent of blaming depends on the kind of victim considered. The authors evaluated scales for blaming (a) victims in general, (b) society in general, (c) a specific kind of victim (i.e., AIDS), and (d) the society in which AIDS victims live. The general and specific scales had favorable psychometric properties, including reliability. General and specific victim blaming were significantly and positively correlated, whereas victim blaming and society blaming were not significantly correlated. Multiple regression analyses provided evidence of construct validity for the scales. All blaming variables were significantly related in the hypothesized directions to social distance, social responsibility, and discrimination (regarding persons with AIDS). The general and specific scales made significant and unique contributions. Implications for attribution theory and research are specified.     

The Role of Inclusive and Exclusive Victim Consciousness in Predicting Intergroup Attitudes: Findings from Rwanda,Burundi, and DRC

The present research examined the differential relationship between distinct construals of collective victimhood—specifically, inclusive and exclusive victim consciousness—and intergroup attitudes in the context and aftermath of mass violence. Three surveys in Rwanda (N = 842), Burundi (N = 1,074), and Eastern DRC (N = 1,609) provided empirical support for the hypothesis that while exclusive victim consciousness predicts negative intergroup attitudes, inclusive victim consciousness is associated with positive, prosocial intergroup attitudes. These findings were significant when controlling for age, gender, urban/rural residence, education, personal victimization, and ingroup superiority. Additionally, exclusive victim consciousness mediated the effects of ingroup superiority on negative intergroup attitudes. These findings have important theoretical implications for research on collective victimhood as well as practical implications for intergroup relations in regions emerging from violent conflict.     

Back to the “States” Victim and Abuser States in Borderline Personality Disorder

Chronic and complex posttraumatic stress involving terrorization and betrayal by a caretaker can result in a particular kind of psychic organization that is structured largely by underlying, alternating victim/masochistic and abuser/rageful states. When we move our view of experience “back” to its underpinning in states, we can see how the oscillation between these states is a continual reenactment of the traumatic violation of the relational boundary. While “borderline” persons are capable of conscious awareness of their dramatically differing behaviors, the meaning of the behavior is disavowed. These unlinked, but switching states are decontextualized. Inasmuch as context provides meaning, the acted-out parts remain encapsulated as unowned experience.

Diagnostic formulation in terms of these dissociated states supplies a needed cohesiveness for the criteria given in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition (DSM—IV) and adds specificity to the “borderline” defenses as spelled out by Kernberg. These shifting victim/masochistic and abuser/rageful self-states can be observed and talked about and are accessible to experience. Themes of behaviors that are typically enacted have to do with boundary violations, destructive entitlement, betrayal, and mirroring the earlier experience, particularly of traumatic betrayals of attachment, of these survivors.     

Perpetrators and Social Death: A Cautionary Tale

Understanding evil requires both addressing the grave wrongs done to the victim and addressing the perpetrator who does these wrongs. Claudia Card's concept of social vitality was developed to explain what génocidaires destroy in their victims. This essay brings that concept into conversation with perpetrator testimony, arguing that the génocidaires’ desire for their own social vitality, achieved through their destruction of the social world of their targets, in fact boomerangs to corrode the vitality of their own lives. This is true whether they succeed or fail in their genocidal project. Card's recent analysis of “being a badass” is brought to bear on the cultivation of evil, and the essay suggests four strategies for meeting Card's “moral challenge of avoiding evil responses to evil.”     

Attribution theory and rape victim responsibility

The topic of rape victimization emerged in the last decade as an important social problem. Using a sample of medical students, this paper attempts to unravel the attribution of responsibility imputed to the victim of rape. Victim characteristics were varied by using vignettes in order to create an “ideal” and a “non‐ideal” rape victim.

A testing of the attribution models of the just world and defensive attribution found that respondents assigned low levels of culpability to both victim types. Additionally, sex differences in perceptions of victim responsibility were found, with females according both victim types less blame than did males. Thus, partial support was found for the defensive attribution model.     

“Innocent Victims” of AIDS: Identifying the Subtext1

References to “innocent victims” of AIDS in the media and public discourse imply that other people with AIDS or HIV are blameworthy. In the present study, college undergraduates read two newspaper articles about an “innocent victim” of AIDS, and were required to report what they understood to be the “victim's” message. Very few participants reported the subtext without prompting. When asked directly, however, most respondents (88%) agreed that the “victim” was making an implicit statement about other people with AIDS, and 70% of this subgroup correctly identified the subtext. Compared to other respondents, those who identified the subtext had more positive attitudes toward homosexuals.     

Quality of written record following mock eyewitness testimony: Note taking should be a minimum standard!

By using a video‐based narrative (unidirectional) eyewitness statement of an alleged victim, participants were asked to imagine they were police officers. We compared the quality of mock police officer written records in a between‐subjects design comprising three conditions: (a) a free recall (n = 27), (b) a free recall by using recall strategies of the cognitive interview (n = 27), or (c) note taking while watching the video (n = 26). The quality of the reports was determined by the amount of correctly recalled details, omitted details, added details (commission errors), and changed details (confabulations). As predicted, the number of correct details was higher in the “Note Taking” condition whereas performance in the “Free Recall” and in the “Cognitive Interview” conditions did not differ. Higher verbal memory ability resulted in a better quality of the written records. Our results suggest that note taking facilitates the quality of written records.     

Online Commenting About a Victim of Female-on-Male Rape: The Case of Shia LaBeouf’s Sexual Victimization

The present study explored social responses toward male victims of female-perpetrated rape by analyzing 505 comments posted on www.theGuardian.com in response to the report that Shia LaBeouf, an American actor and director, was raped by a woman. Using inductive thematic analysis, three themes were generated: Victim’s Character, Victim’s Behavior and Victim’s Story. In addition, each comment was rated regarding its general attitude toward the victim: negative, positive, or mixed. We found that 55% of the comments expressed negative, blaming attitudes toward the victim, 35% were positive and supportive, and 10% were mixed. The findings show that negative comments depict rape as a sexual act against the victim’s will, whereas positive comments portray rape as sexual acts without the victim’s consent. Additionally, negative comments addressed expectation regarding “real men” and “real rape,” whereas positive comments emphasized gender equality in rape comprehension and victim treatment. Our discussion addresses the findings within the context of traditional gender roles and perceptions of “real” rape and presents implications for education and training. Furthermore, we suggest that the existence of positive and mixed responses may indicate a possible change in boundaries of social responses not just regarding male rape victims, but for all rape victims.     

Victim and Perpetrator Accounts of Hurtful Messages: An Actor–Partner Interdependence Model

This study examined how message characteristics and relational turbulence correspond with victim and perpetrator experiences of hurtful messages. Romantic partners described 2 events: one where each of them was a victim of the partner's hurtful message. Trained judges evaluated qualities of hurtful messages and participants reported relationship qualities, intensity of hurt experienced as a victim, and the partner's hurt feelings when the respondent was the perpetrator. Third‐party ratings of hurtfulness were associated with victims' intensity of hurt. For females, relational turbulence was associated with their intensity of hurt as victims. For males, relational turbulence was associated with their perception of the female victims' hurt. The authors discuss the implications for the work on hurtful messages and relational turbulence.     

La croyance au monde juste comme facteur explicatif de diverses réactions à des injustices professionnelles

The belief in a just world is defined as the tendency to consider that “people get what they deserve and deserve what they get”, i.e. to consider that the world is, globally, a place of justice. Facing an individual unjustly victim of negative events and for whom it seems impossible to restore the justice objectively, we frequently deny the existence of the unjustice, even if we say the responsible of what he gets. But if we can react by adopting “passive” reactions (using the victim’s moral or behavioral responsibility, as in Lerner, or evocating a future favoring the victim,..), we can also adopt “active” strategies which can lead to an objective re-establishment of the justice. In the present study, we examined the influence of the degree of the belief in the just world on the selected strategy facing professional injustices. And effectively, our results indicate a some preferences in the use of such or strategy, preferences accentuated by the gender and the professional statute.     

Guilt,Remorse and Victims

In Shame and Necessity, Bernard Williams describes the experience of guilt in terms of fear at the anger of an internalised other, who is a “victim or enforcer.” Williams says it is a merit of his account that it shows how our guilt turns us towards the victims of our wrongdoing. I argue that his account in fact misses the most important form of guilt's “concern with victims”– the experience of remorse. I consider, and reject, one way of trying to supplement this lack in Williams's account of guilt. Finally, I sketch some features of remorse that suggest that remorse belongs to a very different moral picture from the one painted by Williams.     

From “I” to “We”: Different forms of identity,emotion, and belief predict victim support volunteerism among nominal and active supporters

Understanding how to attract and maintain volunteers is crucial for the operation of victim support organizations. We propose that volunteerism can be understood in a similar way as collective action. Active (N = 99) and nominal supporters (N = 134) completed measures of identities (personal, social, and organizational), emotions (sympathy, outrage, and pride), and efficacy beliefs (self‐, group, and organizational). The results revealed a different pattern of predictors of volunteerism for the two samples. Among nominal supporters, commitment to volunteerism was predicted by personal identity (“I”), sympathy, and self‐efficacy; among the actively engaged, volunteerism was predicted by social identity (“we”), outrage, and self‐efficacy. These results suggest that engagement with volunteerism is associated with qualitatively different processes for those nominally versus actively supportive of volunteer efforts.     

“Could this happen to me?”: Threat‐related state orientation increases position identification with victims of random, “senseless” violence

Two experiments examined the role of threat‐related action‐state orientation in how observers become psychologically involved with victims of violence. Observing incidents of random, “senseless” violence is uniquely threatening to observers because they violate just world beliefs and appear like they could happen to anyone. Because stronger threat‐related state‐oriented individuals are less effective in down‐regulating such threats to the self, they should perceive stronger self‐concerned position identification (i.e., “this could happen to me”) when confronted with random, “senseless” violence. In contrast, no such effects should occur for observers' person identification (i.e., their other‐concerned empathy for the victim). The results of two experiments supported these ideas and ruled out potential alternative explanations based on individuals' just world beliefs, need for cognition, and their attribution strategies. We discuss the importance of threat‐related self‐regulation processes with regard to self‐ and other‐concerned mechanisms through which observers come to care for victims of violence. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Women's Agency in a Context of Oppression: Assessing Strategies for Personal Action and Public Policy

Popular debates about “victim feminism” have receded but underlying concerns about the extent of gender inequality and usefulness of strategies highlighting difference are still relevant. This paper applies Susan Wendell's framework—relating to women's agency under conditions of oppression—to the experience of women firefighters. The framework fits well, but one case reveals the need to modify it by attending to community. An elaboration of the framework is then used to examine four policy issues.